The 13 places left on Terry’s list include Fernando de Noronha, an archipelago 220 miles off the coast of Brazil, the Juan Fernandez Islands, 400 miles off Chile, and the British Indian Ocean Territory.

Sadly for Terry, unless you’re in the military, the BIOT – a base for American forces – is almost impossible to reach.

There are stories of travellers hiring yachts, sailing nearby, then calling a fake SOS to get taken ashore.

“I met a guy in South Sudan – we were there when it first became a country,” remembers Terry. “He was really upset when I said I was from England: ‘You bastards!’

“His last place (on the list) was Diego Garcia.”

Terry doesn’t know whether he’ll finish the 325 – not least because he’s having both knees replaced two days after this interview – but his eyes dance at the possibility.

“When I’m doing new countries, I get a real thrill,” he says. “I think: ‘I made it’.”

The TCC list: Some of the remotest places

Cocos Islands (Australian territory in the Indian Ocean)

Norwegian Antarctic

Pitcairn Island (a British island in the South Pacific)

Wake Island (a remote Pacific island administered by the US)

The Travelers’ Century Club has members all over the world, with chapters (branches) in the US, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom.

The Washington DC chapter meets in the back room of a restaurant in nearby Virginia. More than 20 members turn up to swap stories, share tips, and see friends old and new.

Listening to the chatter is like leafing through an atlas – a Lord Howe Island here; a Queen Maud Land there.

Jorie Roberts, a 62-year-old tax lawyer from the US Virgin Islands, has been to 157 places on the TCC list. She grew up in Alabama and, like Bill Ashley, didn’t travel abroad as a child.

When she was 17, a teacher led a summer trip to Europe – London, Dijon, Geneva, Rome – and she has “travelled ever since”.

Like many members , Jorie disproves the “box-ticking” theory by revisiting favourite places. She has, for example, been to Iran twice and Cuba four times.

“We met a photographer who lived with Che and Fidel in the late 50s in the mountains,” she says. “He had all sorts of pictures of them in hammocks with cigars. It was fascinating.”